sometimes the best conversations are the ones you could not have planned if you tried.
i had known Antoine for about 72 hours when we recorded these two episodes.
we did not meet through social media. we did not get introduced by a mutual friend. there was no scheduled interview, networking event, expat meetup, or carefully curated travel experience involved.
he heard American voices while waiting for the elevator in my building in Salvador, Bahia, and knocked on the door.
that was it.
a few days later, he was sitting on my sofa overlooking the ocean, we were talking, and eventually I turned on the microphone.
Antoine, who is also sometimes called Tomahawk, is from the United States and has been living in Colombia for years while continuing to return to the U.S. for work. he has traveled extensively, served in the military, works in a field that allows him to take contracts in chunks, and has deliberately structured his life so that work supports the life he wants instead of becoming the entire life.
that distinction became one of the threads running through both conversations.
part one: how do you end up living like this?
part one begins with how we met, but quickly turns into the story of how Antoine became a solo traveler in the first place.
his first independent international trip was to the Dominican Republic. the reason was simple. his birthday falls close to Christmas, coordinating with other people was becoming a problem, and he got tired of waiting.
as he puts it:
“I’m about to start celebrating myself. I don’t even need anybody else.”
so he went alone.
after that, traveling alone stopped being unusual.
we talk about his military experience and Hawaii, his years in Colombia, the difference between spending time inside an expat bubble and engaging with the place where you actually live, and what happens psychologically when another country starts feeling more like home than the country printed on your passport.
one of the strongest moments comes when Antoine talks about returning to the United States after his first experience in Colombia. he remembers sitting on the airplane with tears running down his face because, in his words, he had discovered a kind of happiness there that he had not experienced before.
that leads us into a complicated conversation about race and class.
Antoine talks about his experiences as a Black American man traveling through Colombia and Brazil. we compare how race operates in the United States with what we have personally observed in Latin America, while also talking about classism and the danger of assuming that another country is free of racism simply because racism looks different there.
these are personal observations, not universal conclusions, and that distinction matters.
we also get into something people constantly ask travelers and people who relocate:
how are you paying for all of this?
Antoine’s answer is considerably less glamorous than the Instagram version.
when he is working in the United States, he works hard and cuts expenses aggressively. he talks about long days, inexpensive housing, limiting his social life, avoiding unnecessary spending, and stacking money while he has a contract.
then he leaves.
the irony, which he admits himself, is that once he gets overseas, his restraint can disappear and he likes living well.
there is an actual financial strategy underneath the lifestyle, but it is not based on pretending that travel magically became free.
and somewhere in the middle of all of that, I interrupt a perfectly good interview because Antoine has ridiculous eyelashes.
his response:
“Who wants to have their best feature be their eyelashes?”
this is why I cannot conduct a normal interview.
part two: how much money is enough?
part two is where the conversation starts moving from how did you build this life? to how long can you keep building it this way?
Antoine has no interest in working twelve months simply because he technically could.
he prefers contract work. two months. three months. six months. get in, make the money, and get out.
he talks about losing a contract in a way that would sound completely backward to someone whose entire financial life depends on remaining continuously employed.
“Anytime a contract ends or if I lose a contract or anything bad happens… I go on vacation.”
that only works, of course, because he plans for it.
and that is where the conversation gets more interesting.
freedom and financial irresponsibility are not the same thing.
Antoine is thinking about retirement. he is building a nest egg. he talks about buying property in Colombia, pursuing residency, establishing residual income, and eventually eliminating the need to return to the United States for work.
at one point he describes looking at his life like an hourglass:
“I look at my life in an hourglass, and that motherfucker is tilted.”
that may be the clearest explanation of his entire philosophy.
he knows he could make more money by working more.
he simply does not believe every dollar available to him is worth another piece of his life.
we also talk about work from another angle: what younger people should learn now.
the conversation moves through construction, welding, electrical work, plumbing, military benefits, and skilled trades before Antoine starts looking forward. in his view, people entering the workforce should be paying attention to drones, robotics, artificial intelligence, and the jobs required to operate the technology replacing other forms of labor.
we are not presenting his predictions as guarantees. what interested me was the way he was thinking about work itself.
instead of asking only, what job can I get?
the better question may be:
what kind of work will give me the life I actually want?
the part that interested me most
these two episodes are not really a travel guide.
Antoine does talk about Colombia, Brazil, Hawaii, the Dominican Republic, South Korea, and other places he has experienced. we talk about residency, property, careers, money, culture, retirement, relationships, and some things that probably should have remained off-mic but absolutely did not.
but underneath all of it is a question I keep coming back to.
what are you optimizing your life for?
more income?
more possessions?
security?
time?
mobility?
adventure?
community?
peace?
some combination of all of them?
Antoine has made his choice. he will leave money on the table if taking it means giving up too much of his time.
you do not have to agree with him.
in fact, there are plenty of things in these conversations that listeners may disagree with.
that is exactly why I wanted to publish them.
Brasil: Behind Closed Doors was never supposed to be a collection of people giving the approved answer about living abroad.
sometimes it is simply two people sitting in an apartment in Bahia, talking about how they got here, what they have learned, what they still have not figured out, and what they are willing to trade for a life that feels like their own.
listen to both parts above.
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